My Life is like a Fairy Tale

By Robert Irwin

‘Robert Irwin vividly and brilliantly blends the fictional life and all-too-real times of a film star of the Nazi era in this a narrative of diminishing options and the advance to death and destruction. Cultured, clever and funny at times, in a grim Charles Adams way, Robert Irwin’s novel is engrossing and enveloping.
From a dull Dutch childhood in Dordrecht and a waitressing job, sexy Sonja Heda, cigarette in hand, wangles her way on to the film sets of various independent production companies making the films of the Weimar and Nazi eras. From The Blue Angel, The Gypsy Baron, Jew Suss, Habanera and Munchausen she lands the starring role in the Nazi screwball comedy Bagdad Capers.
Although German cinema became a key part of the Nazi war effort, the film industry continued to produce commercial films appealing to the varying film tastes of German filmgoers. Joseph Goebbels at the head of the Ministry of Propaganda propagated Nazi supremacist ideology and indoctrinate the population of Germany though film and radio, not unlike the way reality TV and social media are used today by populist politicians in the US and UK.’

Georgia de Chamberet in Ten Books for Independent Minds from Bookblast

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dedalus Ebooks
• Release date: Jun 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781912868254

Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin is a novelist, historian, critic, and scholar and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of seven novels, among them The Arabian Nightmare (1988), which Neil Gaiman has called "one of the finest fantasies of the last century." Robert Irwin resides in England.

Book preview

Chapter One

A shot rang out. After a momentary pause the young man who had fired the shot screamed and then fell to the floor in front of the large mirror which could now be seen to be cracked from top to bottom. Where before there had been silence there was now an excited babble.

Sonja disliked films with lots of snow in them, films featuring cripples, anything with Emil Jannings in it, documentaries, any film by or starring Leni Riefenstahl, foreign language films, sad films about women who end up committing suicide like those ones that Kristina Söderbaum kept starring in, and, above all, she hated horror films: symphonies of grey, exotic hook-nosed faces, claw-like hands, candlelit cellars, yawning sepulchres, panic-stricken drives across desolate moors, and bafflingly mysterious plots about man’s dual nature, at once angelic and bestial, or some such bogusly profound theme. There were enough horrors in real life. One did not need them on the screen as well. She had just been watching the shooting of the final scene of a remake of the 1926 version of The Student of Prague and, though this was the only shoot that she had stayed to watch, it was obviously a horror film and she would not bother with it when it reached the cinemas.

Needing some fresh air, she walked out of the studio. The Great Hall where the really big scenes were shot towered over the other long huts of Universum-Film AG studios which were laid out in an orderly fashion, as if the place was a barracks or a work camp. Well, it was a sort of work camp she supposed, but quite a pleasant one, and not like the ones to which the communists and Jews were being sent. The huts, comprising the studios (some of which were glass-roofed), the workshops, the props store, the costume store and the make-up room, had all been set up to facilitate the industrialised production of fantasy.

At length, feeling the cold, she entered the UFA canteen and fished out the big new notebook from her bag. How to begin? Where should she start her story? Some films started in the middle of the story, before going on to work with flashbacks, but probably it would be easier to start with her birth, her childhood schooling and all that. Now she thought about it, flashbacks only really came in during the thirties. In the same way, close-ups were rare in the films she had watched as a child. It took some getting used to, seeing heads with no bodies or people moving about with no visible legs. But she was drifting. Back to the autobiography. If only she had had a more exciting childhood and if only she had realised then that she was going to want some early excitement in her life in order to make the mature woman’s proposed book work. If only it was possible to literally flashback and return to one of her younger selves. But no, she was rambling again. She must make a proper start, once, that is, she had got a cigarette alight. Now for the start. She was about to put pen to paper when she felt a hand upon her shoulder. It was Werner, one of the focus pullers. Had he come as messenger to tell her that a new part had been found for her? But no. It was not good news.

‘There was a man at the gate asking questions about you. He was very persistent. Apparently they had a lot of trouble sending him on his way.’ Then seeing the expression on her face, Werner continued, ‘Don’t worry. He didn’t look anything like Gestapo.’

If only it had been someone from the Gestapo. Sonja had nothing to fear from them. Dear Joseph would continue to look after her. It must be Wieland, still haunting her. She wished that he were dead, so that his haunting was only that of a ghost. Inside the empire of the UFA studios at Neue Babelsberg she might be safe from him, but only there, and the filming of The Woman of My Dreams was nearly complete and, unless she secured the role that she thought she had been promised in Kolberg, she would be unemployed and find herself to be, like Wieland, vainly seeking entrance to the dream factory. After Marika Rökk’s big dance number that was just now being filmed, there were a few remaining outdoor scenes to shoot and then inevitably there would be some retakes, particularly since the crew still had limited experience in lighting sets for a film in colour. But the work might be finished in a matter of weeks or even days.

Werner interrupted her reverie, ‘The man left a message. It was that he had something of yours. Something which you badly need to have back. He said that he would be in touch.’

Sonja nodded and tried to dismiss Wieland and the world outside Babelsberg from her mind and for a while she succeeded. She was very good at not thinking about things that she did not want to think about. She could switch off thinking about Wieland, or Rommel’s retreat from Libya, or the Russian advance on Kursk, or the poor reception of Baghdad Capers, or her mislaid ration card, or the imminence of her next birthday.

Instead she thought back to the big dance scene towards the end of The Woman of My Dreams. Marika had performed her third ethnic dance on a vast glittery set that was painted orange and gold and dominated by an enormous white cascade of a staircase whose steps led nowhere and which was there for no better reason than to demonstrate Marika’s ability to tap dance up and down staircases. The supporting chorines, dressed in a romantically bogus Spanish fashion, wore mantillas and sported fans. Sonja had been one of them. They paraded like eerily disciplined goldfish behind Marika, who swayed sinuously and, as she did so, showed a lot of thigh. Sonja doubted whether that was going to get past the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Anyway Marika’s legs were too fat and her body was stubby. The camera and lighting crews had to work hard to conceal this. She had been leaping about like a kangaroo. Sonja did not call that dancing. In an interview to the press, Marika had described herself as ‘volcanic’. But who wants to see a dancing volcano?

Belatedly Sonja decided that it was also time to dismiss Marika from her mind. The autobiography was more important. She picked up her pencil again and looked down on the notebook which was still empty. She needed to summon up memories of growing up in Dordrecht. There were memories of peacetime and childish innocence and of the gabled houses and their wavering reflection in the water of the canals. Beside those canals old men in blue linen jackets and baggy trousers sat on stoops and smoked clay pipes or chewed tobacco. It was all a bit boring. There always seemed to be jackdaws hovering round the belfry of Dordrecht’s main church. The cobbled streets had been eerily quiet. Yes, certainly quiet – and this was not personal enough. She should start instead with her family and her toys. Memories… memories. It was like that game where one had to look at a medley of objects on a tray and then, once they had been covered by a cloth, one tried to list them all. She had had two china dolls. There was a board game based on a battle in the Franco-Prussian War, a small collection of musical boxes, a glass box containing a maze which a silver ball had to find its way through, a tiny wooden ape that could climb its wooden ladder and a large volume containing the Dutch syndicated version of comic strips featuring the misadventures of Little Nemo in his dream world.

Still much too dull? It was a bit like a séance in which the only message that comes to her from the spirit world is that she has forgotten to buy potatoes earlier that morning. She had supposed that one should start at the beginning and go on to the end. But why should German readers be at all interested in her childhood in Holland? And then there was the awkward fact that Dordrecht had suffered horribly during the German invasion of 1940. It had been a garrison town, there had been heavy fighting and many of the historic buildings that she should be describing had been destroyed. On the one hand, it might be a good idea to paint a picture of girlhood in a dull, provincial town in order to make a contrast with the glamorous life she now led. On the other hand, dullness was dullness. Perhaps it would be best to start with Wieland after all – the serpent who had found its way into the garden of innocence. What could be said for Wieland was that he would be interesting to read about. But then there was the danger that he was so interesting that he might take over her autobiography.

Perhaps childhood in Dordrecht was the wrong place to start the memoirs of a film star? Rather, she should begin with her starring role in Baghdad Capers and then present her younger self in a series of flashbacks? Or perhaps she should give an account of what she could call her ‘friendship’ with Goebbels. What is the best way to write a memoir? And what should her title be? My Path to Stardom sounded arrogant and, come to that, a little premature. How about Memories of the Dream Factory? No, that seemed to imply that her career was almost over. Maybe Everything Has Gone Well? Or From Clogs to… to something or other.

The book should be produced on proper creamy white paper, not the brittle stuff that things were printed on nowadays and which went brown so quickly. There was no point in publishing her book before Hitler launched his secret weapon and the Russians, who were fighting on over-extended supply lines, would be forced into a humiliating retreat. Only then, with the war won and the time of hardships over, would the public be ready to read her inspiring story. It occurred to Sonja that her book should contain snapshots. A star pupil at dance school receiving her prize. Her appearance in her first supporting role, in Habanera. Her lunch with Goebbels and his delightful family. At a birthday party for Emil Jannings. At the premiere of The Great Love. Her big star number in Baghdad Capers. Her name in big letters above the entrance to the UFA Palace by the zoo. Chatting with Hans Albers on the set of Munchausen. Being presented to Hitler at the Berghof.

Everybody’s life should be like a film. In The Woman of My Dreams, Julia, the famous stage performer (played, curse it, by Marika) clad only in a fur coat and her underwear, suddenly flees stardom and having disembarked from the train at the wrong place, she gets lost in an Alpine snowstorm. But then she finds refuge in the mountain cabin of two handsome young engineers, Peter and Erwin. Both are struck by Julia’s beauty and vivacity (this last madly overplayed by Marika). Julia keeps her identity as a big star a secret and in what follows all sorts of misunderstandings transpire and she is almost killed by a landslide when she tries to run away. Eventually she does make her way back to Berlin and reassumes her role as the big star, signing autographs and contracts and making it up with her manager. Peter, who had resolved never to see her again, nevertheless does see her performing in a series of spectacular dances of which the Spanish sequence was one and he realises that she is the only woman for him, the woman of his dreams. As a final twist, they quarrel when he visits her in her changing room. The film ends with Julia realising that she loves him after all and so she has to rush out of the theatre and chase after him. The two are reunited in each other’s arms.

Our life is no film, but it can and should become one. Once Sonja reached the pinnacle of her career she hoped that she would do as Julia did and renounce the trappings of fame for love. She would abandon her former life as a femme fatale and settle down in comfortable domesticity. Yet it seemed to her necessary to become famous before rejecting all that fame might bring. She believed that one day she would come to prefer the love of one strong man to the adoration of so many admirers. Would she settle for Peter the engineer? Played by Wolfgang Lukschy in this film, he was very handsome, but oh so serious – and apparently not rich.

So far as she was concerned there was no man alive who could match Rudolph Valentino. At least she had not met one yet. Her parents had not allowed her to see Blood and Sand or The Sheik. That would have been unthinkable, but Sonja had covertly studied the stills of Valentino in film magazines and much later when he died in 1926 she read everything she could about his funeral. It was rumoured that he had been poisoned by a former mistress. A hundred thousand people marched behind his coffin. Apparently four Blackshirts delivered a wreath from Mussolini. Pola Negri, who claimed to be Valentino’s fiancée, collapsed over his grave. All over America women committed suicide on hearing of the death of the Latin Lover. Every year, on the anniversary of that death, a veiled woman dressed in black and carrying a red rose appeared at his grave. It was only after Sonja fled to Germany that she was able to see the actual films, starting with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. That picture was now banned by the Nazis for being anti-war, but this was too late for Sonja, since by then she had irrevocably fallen in love with a dead man. Was it possible to be in love with a handful of dust? None of the German film stars could come near Valentino, not even Hans Albers. In Germany the men of the SS and the Wehrmacht strutted about and gave orders, but on the Nazi cinema screens it was the women who ruled – Zarah Leander, Christina Söderbaum, Lida Baarova, Ilse Werner and (curse it) Marika Rökk.

Of course, the part of Julia should have been given to Sonja. Though Sonja had only been given a small part, she took comfort from Tilde having quoted Stanislavski to her: ‘Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors’. The reason that Sonja had agreed to appear as a hat-check girl and then again in the Japanese dance sequence in The Woman of My Dreams is that she hoped that Joseph would give her a bigger part in Kolberg. Everybody was talking about Kolberg. Planning for this film was far advanced and not only would it again be in colour, but it would be by far the biggest, most expensive, most spectacular film ever shot in Germany. It would be superlative and the world would watch it and marvel.

Cigarette break.

Maybe Wieland had her missing ration card? If so, so what? It would certainly be troublesome, but she could get another one and, if there were difficulties, she could appeal to Joseph for help. She was not going to go on her knees before Wieland for an old ration card.

Now it occurred to her that she should write her memoir in such a way that it cried out to be made into a film. To that end she must make her story visual. So, as well as flashbacks, it should have fade-ins, dissolves, jump cuts, montage and all sorts of other filmic tricks that she was a bit vague about. Also her life story ought to have the same sort of happy ending that The Woman of My Dreams was offering.

While it was tempting to skip over her dull childhood in Dordrecht, it was important that her readers should realise the humble and quite ordinary beginnings she started from. And that they should be aware that, despite her somewhat oriental appearance, she has no Jewish blood in her. There were no Jews in Dordrecht. At least she never saw any. Anyway, back to the dullness. Except for Sundays, every day was the same and Tuesday seemed the same as Monday, for only the name of the day had changed and then Wednesday was the same as Tuesday… the only promise of another world and the presage of future glamour, love, violence and the exotic came from films. This was where she should start, since that there led to this here. Then she was distracted by her memory of Wieland starting a campaign to abolish Wednesdays so that the working week would be shortened.

But no, back to her memories of a Dutch childhood. At first there was no bioscope or cinematograph house in Dordrecht, but travelling showmen brought screens and projectors with them and presented their shows where they could. Several competing booths were set up in July when the summer fair took place and the local women paraded in traditional dress. Film barkers in top hats stood in front of the tents and bellowed out the details of forthcoming attractions. Sonja’s parents had reluctantly permitted her to go to films which might be thought to have some religious content. So Sonja had seen Quo Vadis, The Queen of Sheba, Intolerance, The Kiss of Judas, The Ten Commandments, Judith of Bethulia and Ben Hur and she knew about the grey and ancient Bible lands which were peopled by languorous oriental princesses wearing thick mascara and who were waited upon by slaves wielding ostrich-feather fans. The film barker stood beside the sheet on which the films were projected and he shouted out the plot and supplied some of the dialogue. He had to shout in order to drown out the noise of the projector.

But there were other films she was forbidden to see – for example, the Biograph Company masterpiece: The Battle of Elderbush Gulch. The poster showed a white woman lying unconscious in the middle of a prairie. A fierce Red Indian knelt over her and held a screaming baby over his head. Had the woman just been ravished? Or would she surrender herself to the savage in order to save the life of her child? It all looked quite exciting. Then there was the poster for Cleopatra, which showed Theda Bara (Arab Death to her anagrammatically knowing fans) standing with arms folded in a hieratic pose in front of a disc covered with hieroglyphics. Hers was the gaze that commanded the destinies of men. She was indeed Death incarnate.

Now Sonja recalled that when she was a child there was always plenty to eat – herrings, black rye bread, split-pea soup, bacon, onions, gherkins, cheese and apples. Not like now. The UFA canteen provided more and better food than could be found in all but a handful of restaurants in Berlin. Even so, for almost two years now Sonja had been eating powdered eggs, bread that was made from something that caused her to fart a lot and ersatz marmalade. It was pleasant then to linger in memory over laden tables and busy restaurants in Dordrecht, so pleasant that Sonja now wondered if her autobiography would ever get any further. Perhaps she and her readers might settle for dining on memories.

But reflecting on restaurants brought Wieland back into the picture. Sonja had found temporary work in a restaurant in Dordrecht, her first job. It was a Saturday lunchtime and they had a dozen customers, which, considering the times, was unusually good business…

But no this was not the right place to start. (Sonja was beginning to understand that the main business of writing was ordering one’s material.) So another beginning. This time in Amsterdam. She was seventeen or eighteen then and in a tram that was caught behind a convoy of horse-drawn delivery carts. She was thinking that a funeral cortege would have delivered her to her destination faster. Just then the strange young man sitting beside her gave her a nudge.

‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said, ‘but I have to take some medicine now. I don’t suppose you happen to have a glass of water on you of which I could avail myself?’

‘No, sorry. I don’t.’

But no sooner were the words out of her mouth than she was thinking what the hell am I apologising to this lunatic for?’ How am I going to have a glass of water on me while travelling on a tram? Did he think I had one in my coat pocket filled and ready for the emergencies of travelling strangers? If only the tram were not so crowded, I could change seats. Otherwise the next thing he will ask me for is a stethoscope or a bottle of surgical spirits. Or is his silliness the new way of chatting up girls? He must think me a fool! Damn him for his impudence!

Sonja turned back to the window. The young man did not seem put out at being rebuffed by her. Now she could see in the window’s reflection that he was tapping the shoulder of an older woman sitting on the seat in front of him and he was repeating his crazy request, adding that it was really rather urgent. His accent was foreign – German probably. Sonja looked to the woman to see how she would deal with the madman.

Although the woman looked alarmed and confused, she started to forage about in her large handbag, in course of which she apparently discovered all sorts of stuff which she had forgotten was in there. But finally, with a triumphant flourish, she did produce a glass of water. This the young man grabbed and, after some fumbling in his coat pockets, he found a large pill which he proceeded to swallow with the aid of that water. Having drained the glass, he returned it to the woman with the most profuse thanks. She just looked confused and embarrassed.

The man, the lunatic, had an extraordinarily long face, in the midst of which was an extraordinarily long nose. His eyes were hooded and he had wispy blond hair. He did not look entirely human. At the next stop along the Amstel the lunatic alighted and Sonja in a daze watched him pull his coat tight around him before he slouched off into the darkness of one of the narrow streets that led to the Rembrandtsplein. So the world was not as Sonja had supposed. There were holes in it through which one could tumble and find oneself in another reality. The tram, still stuck behind those carts, was moving slowly when Sonja rose from her seat, pushed her way to the rear platform and jumped. She landed ankle-deep in slush and hurried back to the little street. She thought that this was the beginning of an adventure and she was right.

Chapter Two

Cigarette break.

Sonja paused in her writing. Should this sort of crazy stuff feature in the beginning of a film star’s autobiography? Moreover, she did not want Wieland to take over her book. But she could write it out anyway and perhaps throw it away later. Meanwhile writing about it might function as a kind of exorcism. But first she supposed it was necessary to give a sense of the city in which her first encounter with Wieland took place.

She was last in Amsterdam about twenty years later in the winter of 1941-2 for the filming of Eternal Rembrandt, directed by Hans Steinhoff. She was not one of the cast. Steinhoff had told her that, with her glossy dark hair, slightly slanting eyes and dark complexion, she just did not look Dutch enough. He was looking for a flaxen haired Hausfrau – for the film at least. Still, she had been loaned by UFA to Terra productions to serve as interpreter and to advise on props and locations. This was yet another of those films about a towering Germanic genius who faced great obstacles before triumphing over lesser folk, the sub-humans who populated most of Europe. Rembrandt was a perfect example of the ‘creative brain’ that Hitler had praised in Mein Kampf. The plot centred round Rembrandt’s painting of The Night Watch and the company of burghers-posturing-as-soldiers who had protested that some of their members could hardly be seen in the deep shadows that the great artist had painted them into. And meanwhile his wife, Saskia, was dying. Sonja would have loved that part, but she had to acknowledge that she did not look right for the part.

In some ways that winter in Holland was hard. Of course, there was a blackout. Also food for the actors and film crew had to be brought in from Germany. The locals were unfriendly. Several times Sonja was spat at and, when she ventured to protest that she was Dutch like them that just made it worse. She was judged to be one of those tarts who slept with the enemy in exchange for food and cigarettes. She could understand their response and she even sympathised with it a little, even though, in some cases, she guessed that they were just jealous.

Despite the resentment of the locals, there were good times to be had. At the end of a day’s shooting there always seemed to be a limitless supply of Dutch gin. The wonderful thing about being in the film business was the number of parties. And besides, parties were fun that also happened to be work. As Sonja saw it, parties were hiring fairs and, if she was not at the parties, she would be forgotten about and not be hired. So she felt that there was a strange kind of virtue in going to a party, getting very drunk and going to bed with someone afterwards. But none of that was relevant and none of it should appear in her autobiography.

She should now give some picture of Amsterdam as it appeared to her when, as a young woman, she first met Wieland. It was just that she had such a dizzy mind and she was aware that she inclined to wander from subject to subject and from memory to memory. People thought this charming, she was sure. But just now she knew she needed mental discipline. Perhaps she should take up algebra or Sanskrit? But not now. Now she needed to concentrate on Amsterdam and that first meeting with Wieland.

Sonja had ran the length of Pilgrims Paarden Straat. Rembrandtsplein was almost deserted. The lunatic was nowhere in sight. She was back in the world of the familiar and the dull. Soon she would be returning to Dordrecht and that interrupted course on stenography. Just as she was walking past the Café Schiller and thinking about the closure of the magic hole into another world, she caught a glimpse through the café’s frosted window of the lunatic sitting at a table with four other young men, lunatics also presumably. They were mostly silent and seemed to be waiting for someone. Then a woman brushed past Sonja and, having entered the café, joined the gathering of lunatics. They were certainly lunatics for, as she arrived at their table, they all burst into manic laughter. The woman turned and gestured, apparently pointing to something that had happened outside the café. She had long black hair and, though her face was ugly, her eyes were bright with wild glee and now Sonja recognised her as the woman with the providential handbag on the tram.

This was too much. Sonja was going to confront these people and demand an explanation. She entered the café, but then stood close by the door uncertain what to do next. The wispy haired man had his back to her, but the woman with the handbag eventually saw Sonja and clearly recognised her. She raised a finger to summon her over. Sonja moved like a sleepwalker towards the group. She had no idea at all what she was going to say.

The lunatic was saying something to the woman, it was impossible to hear what, until, directed by the woman’s gaze, he turned at last to look at Sonja.

‘Ach! It is the beautiful girl from the tram!’

The table was lit by a candle and the shadows it created made the lunatic’s face seem stranger than ever. He might have been an apparition conjured up in a séance.

He sprang to his feet and seized one of Sonja’s hands.

‘I kiss the hand!’ he declared with mock formality and he bowed and clicked his heels as he did so. Then he spoiled the effect by bursting into laughter.

‘Please be seated!’ he said and dragged another chair over and pressed her into it. ‘My name is Wieland. Then he introduced her to the others. They were all Germans and the woman’s name was Mechtilde.

‘I will get you a schnapps,’ said Wieland.

Then they sat in silence, the young men studying Sonja’s face intently as if they hoped to learn something from it. Wieland returned with the schnapps.

‘Drink up,’ he said. ‘But, if you have pursued us in the hope of getting any kind of apology, you should put such a thought out of your mind. We never apologise. What is your name please?’ Wieland’s manner was defiant, yet nervous. With a shaking hand he tried to light a cigarette.

‘Sonja Heda.’

‘Well, Miss Heda, you should feel flattered. I only chose you for our little drama because I liked